Learning isn't, but school is. Especially grad school and upper division undergrad. Cheaters in a class artifically inflate the curve. This is one of the reasons that I don't like school. The very fact that plagiarism is possible annoys me. I would rather be creating something original that couldn't be plagarised even if I wanted to.
You can argue that grades don't matter much in the real world, but I have at least one counter example. Two people I know both graduated with engineering degrees at the same time. They both had 2 internships in their field (one in common) and did the same extracurricular activities. The main difference was in their GPAs.
One couldn't find a job by graduation time so he went to grad school for 2 years at a research assistant's salary. The other chose his dream job from multiple offers and went to work a month after graduation, taking grad school classes at night with his company paying for tuition. When the first finally finished grad school, it took him another 6 months to find a job he loves, and he still makes 10 thousand a year less than the other even though he has a Master's degree and the second guy is still slowly working on his.
In a better economy, the disparity may not have been so evident, but the bottom line is one guy has more home equity, more savings, less debt, and a few more fun vacations under his belt all because of less than 1 point difference in GPA. It will take the other guy quite a while to catch up.
Now, I agree that if the guy with better grades had cheated to get them, the other guy would catch up a lot quicker when job performance is what mattered most. But it would have still hurt him in the short term. Cheaters may not be hurting anyone but themselves in high school, but they can affect you financially after college.
One month with a broken hard drive is nothing. I've been running without a hard drive at all for over 6 months on my laptop (okay, not continuously, but daily). Of course, I've been using Knoppix. I intended to use it only for a couple of weeks until I could replace my hard drive, but I found I didn't miss the hard drive for the type of stuff I use my laptop for. At this point I figure why spend the extra $120 when I've been doing just fine without.
I agree with you, and think it goes even deeper than that. I think in general that poor coders don't contribute to open source projects, especially successful open source projects. It just doesn't interest them to struggle with work all day and then struggle with contributing to open source software at home. They got into computer programming because they like surfing the web and gaming at home and were better than average at administering a windows box at home.
On the other hand, judging from my coworkers, most of the best coders I know use Linux at home or at least try it once in a while because it has good cheap development tools and is highly "tinkerable". They got into computer programming because they enjoyed writing programs for their computer in high school and were pretty good at it.
I can't agree with you more about perl being a good newbie language. When my wife took a beginning programming class, she kept getting hung up on stuff like what the purpose of the public static void main was, types and typecasting, integer vs. float math, compiling, classpaths, includes, memory allocation, etc.
That made me think that Perl would be perfect for a beginner's class. You can learn better how to program instead of learning a programming language, and leave the concepts of libraries, compilation, types, objects, etc. to more advanced classes.
Proprietary software managers have an unfair advantage in this pool. After all, for a living they make release schedules before anyone knows what the new software is actually going to do.
The schedule says we need to finish this in 6 months, but your estimates add up to a year so you'll have to do some stuff in parallel.
Uh, sir, it will still take just as long unless you hire some more staff. Even then, it will take some extra time for training.
But you said these modules were completely independent. You should be able to do two independent tasks in the same amount of time as one. Look how easy it is to schedule it that way in Microsoft Project.
Well, then why don't we all just do 12 at once so it will be done in a month instead of a year?
Don't be silly, it doesn't work that way. The schedule says six months. Boy, for how good you engineers are at algebra and calculus, you sure don't understand the basic mathematics of business.
Orlando Bloom in Evolution!?! I think you mean Orlando Jones;)
The only thing about the LotR DVD extras that I didn't like is when I watched RotK on Wednesday my brain switched to a picture of that short lady double whenever you see only the back of a hobbit/dwarf with the front of a man/wizard and to a picture of that tall man double in the opposite situation. It ruined a lot of the illusion for me. Oh, well, at least I know there are no doubles in the book.
I believe it stands for Direct Rendering Manager. I'm guessing it is a character device because information is streamed to it rather than randomly accessed, but I don't know anything about what it actually does.
It is possible that this is propaganda, but I don't see how it is casting Fear, Uncertainty, or Doubt on anything.
I find it very interesting that some people complain that slashdot just rehashes old news from other websites while others complain that slashdot publishes news that hasn't been confirmed on other websites. Do you want a news site or a search engine?
Keep in mind that all the Pixar movies use rasterization techniques, not raytracing or radiosity.
Raytracing is prominent in the renderman feature list as being available since release 11 and used when the shot merits it. I'd be very surprised if raytracing wasn't used in "Finding Nemo" at least.
Free programmers as an aggregate give something away for nothing. Programmers as individuals work a relatively small amount for thousands of man hours worth of source code in return that is written by other programmers. The software installed on my machine adds up to about 1 gigabyte of source code. By my calculations, that would take me over 4 years of non-stop typing at my fastest speed to create. I think that is worth spending some of my free time for. Advantage: Everyone, Advantage with a sense of pride: Programmers.
If you don't read the entire thing at least read "Return of the King." It moves much faster than the first 2 volumes and you will really be missing out on a lot if you just see the movie. There is only so much you can gather about a character's state of mind from an actor's performance.
There is something to be said for long, wordy descriptions. My first thought when I saw the first movie was, "Wow, they sure got there fast." When I read the book I felt like I was journeying with them and getting to know them as they were getting to know each other. It really improved my appreciation for what they were going through. The fact that it is a journey book makes the long descriptions very appropriate. "Return of the King" moves much faster because for the most part, they are already "there" and in the climax of the story, and only slows down a bit at the end for the journey back home.
Good writers rarely use long descriptions without a good reason. Thinking about why something was included can make it a lot more enjoyable. In college I bought a collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories and poems. I had read many of his works before that, but had never sat down and read all of them in close succession. After a while I realized that the stories I liked the best had started out with the longest descriptions.
Then I got to one story that I knew was going to be great. He went into elaborate detail describing the setting. I read and reread each paragraph, pondering the significance of each detail, the suspense building inside of me almost until I couldn't take it any more. That's when the story abruptly ended, with an explanation that all he wanted to do was describe some nice scenery. Just when I had become accustomed to Poe's masterful plot twists in his short stories, he created an entire story that was one big twist.
The best part for me was that this particular short story would never be featured in a school literature course. The suspense would be completely lost on someone who had not read all of the other short stories first.
Tolkien would not be this popular if he wasn't a good author. He takes some getting used to, but it is well worth the investment.
I've never saved any money by using Linux. I'm probably like the majority of computer owners who don't upgrade Windows without getting a new computer. The cost of Windows is not noticed because it is included with the rest of your computer. And don't try to talk about windows refunds, or $200 Lindows PCs. Have you ever met someone who actually successfully received a windows refund? Do you really want a lowest-of-the-low-end computer system?
Why do I use Linux, then? I'll give you just one example. My laptop hard drive crashed this week and I can't afford to replace it for a few months. With a knoppix CD and a USB pen drive I still have a very usable system in the interim (I guess that's saving me money, but only for a few months).
Very recently, higher-end computers have become available without Windows pre-installed. I look forward to my next computer purchase in a couple of years when using Linux will be able to save me money on software for the first time in 6 years of use.
Yeah, that is a good point. But the sharer's computer is only responding to a request to make the copy, not a command. There's a big difference. A copy machine (well most copy machines) can't help but make a copy if someone presses the copy button. A file sharer's computer has a choice of whether to fulfill or deny the request, and won't fulfill it unless given permission to by the computer's owner (implied by them running the program). It's the difference between you willingly agreeing when someone asks you to commit a crime and someone forcing you to commit a crime at gunpoint. There is a big difference in liability there. There's a reason why libraries can have copy machines, but there are very strict rules about libraries posting content online.
Who's doing the copying? He who shares, or he who downloads?
Technically, the sharer. The sharer's computer makes the copy from the hard drive to the network. That is the point at which 2 copies come into existence. The downloader's computer only moves it from the network to it's own hard drive. In addition, the sharer's computer publicly advertised the availability of the files, so you can't really argue that it was done without the sharer's consent.
Take the computer out of the picture and it becomes a little clearer. You stand out on a street corner with your cassette collection and a dual tape deck with a sign that has a list of songs and says you'll copy them for free if they bring their own blank tape. Someone gives you a tape and you make the copy of the song they wanted and hand it back.
I laughed when I read your reply. Gentoo is a pain to set up, I know, but once it is set up it is stable and very easy to selectively upgrade. They pretty much only use phoenix, abiword, and evolution, so there's no point in downloading 3 full iso images every 6 months or so. Since I do all their admin work anyway, I may as well use a distro I'm comfortable with. They used to have Mandrake, one of the user-friendliest distros I know, and they couldn't do anything by themselves anyway, so the next time they upgraded their hardware I just kept it at my house for a while and got gentoo up and running. Gentoo may be impossible for a newbie to install, but it is just as easy for a newbie to use as any other distro.
When was the last time you saw a typical Windows user who knew what a compiler is, for that matter?
I have my parents on gentoo linux, and all they know is that compiling is what the computer does when I have them type "emerge somepackage".
I haven't tried Lindows yet. I think it would be great for someone like my parents if they didn't have me in the same city. They only have gentoo because I do and the upgrades are easier than when I was downloading Mandrake ISOs just for them all the time. On the other hand, they mainly have Linux because of the cost, so a subscription plan might not work in their case.
I hate to tell you, but there's-more-than-one-way-to-do-it in almost every programming language out there, as far as readability and style goes.
I'm currently debugging some Ada code at work that was written by a primarily-C programmer. And believe me, this sticks out like a sore thumb in his code and makes it hard to read even though I am "fluent" in both Ada and C.
Perl doesn't teach bad programming habits. Perl just allows bad programming habits to a somewhat higher degree than other languages. There is a big difference. C allows more bad programming habits than Ada, but you don't see people shunning C, do you?
Perl was designed to read almost like english if you write it properly, which I (having english as my first language) think makes it very easy to read. Especially look at some of the powerful constructs in Perl 6. Stuff like regexps are even easy to read when accompanied by appropriate commenting.
Perl written by a good perl programmer is the most maintainable out of any language I have worked in professionally. On the other hand, perl written by a bad perl programmer is the least maintainable out of any language I have worked in professionally.
Same goes for english or any natural language. A five year old may speak English very poorly, but you don't see people blaming that on the language itself.
I like the way the linux kernel handles the features vs bug fixes problem: have a separate branch for each. How can you say that the market demands only new features when a bug fix branch isn't even available to purchase? I can believe that the bug fix branch is worth a lot less in a free market, but I find it hard to believe that it is worth nothing.
sorta like handing a Harry Potter Fanatic the Lord of the Rings
I know it's off topic, but I just saw an interview on Today with Stephen King, who said he is a very big fan of both Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. He also said that the 5th Harry Potter book out-grossed the number one movie, "The Hulk," which were both released this weekend. J.K. Rowling has a lot more to offer than comes out in the movies, especially in the last 2 books, which I hope you have read before making assumptions about their quality. Both series deeply explore a character who achieves beyond what anyone could expect of them.
Of course I don't review the source for every project I use in its entirety. I have about 100 MB of compressed source installed on my gentoo machines right now. It takes me about an hour to thoroughly peer review a 15k source file at work. Of course, my method ensures that buggy open source code gets the most reviews. Code without known bugs is less likely to need review in the first place, or has already gone through review when it did contain known bugs in the past.
I don't think the argument is that the code is more maintainable (meaning easy to follow and change) because it's open source, although if you've ever had to maintain code that someone wrote thinking no one else would ever have to read it then you know what a difference "many eyes" makes. Of course, many people will routinely read your code if you develop at Microsoft (or another large closed source company), so their code should be just as maintainable. Remember, most open source developers and users have day jobs at closed source companies, so how can either group write substantially better code than the other?
The argument is that bugs get fixed faster in open source applications, not necessarily easier. By faster I mean the time between when the bug is discovered on an end user's machine and the time the bug is fixed on that user's machine.
For one, users have an incentive to report the bugs in the first place. They didn't pay anything, and want to give something back.
Second, knowledgable users include patches in their bug reports, or at least a pointer to the flawed function, making tracking down the bug much easier. Have you ever tried to fix a bug that you couldn't reproduce on your own system? Having a user that can reproduce it while running with full source capabilities in a debugger really helps.
Third, you can have a fix for an average bug installed on your system in a matter of a a few hours if you do it yourself, a few days if the developer fixes it and you get the cvs version, or a few weeks if you wait for the next official release, all without charge. Our company gets that kind of service with closed source software only on very expensive, somewhat specialized software that we use in our own development.
Most closed source software you have to wait months for a service pack or years for the next release, you usually have to pay for the privilege of having a bug fixed that shouldn't have been there in the first place, and pay for features you don't really want that introduce more bugs.
This whole process leads to more bug-free code than closed source actually installed on user's machines, which is where it counts. And don't even get me started on custom features.
I'd say enough. I submitted a patch to fix a bug in a very small open source project that I was only evaluating for a couple of weeks. If I find a bug and upgrading doesn't help, the first thing I do is look in the source. It doesn't matter how big the project is. If I personally use it I want it to be bug free. I'm sure I'm not the only one who operates that way.
Now, I have never looked at the code wondering if perhaps there is a buffer overflow vulnerability in it. That doesn't interest me, but I know there are plenty of people who it does interest because we get a lot of security vulnerability patches without an exploit in the wild.
I agree with you that every user doesn't upgrade immediately at every release. However, I don't know about you, but if there is a bug in some open source software, and that bug is annoying and obvious enough that I would want to submit a bug report, the first thing I do is upgrade to the latest version and see if it has already been fixed. If it hasn't, I submit a bug report with my workaround patch, and then upgrade when the bug is fixed.
First of all, upgrading is easier than submitting a bug report. Second of all, I don't want to feel like an idiot for reporting something that has already been fixed. And if you report a bug, you have to upgrade anyway or at least patch if you want it fixed. It doesn't cost anything, so why not take the easier route?
I'd say that as Open Source gets more popular with big companies, the less bogus that assumption is. It is in closed source that the assumption is bogus, because the cost of evaluating and qualifying a new version of closed source software is so much higher. Also, more open source upgrades are bug fixes only, where closed source upgrades tend to focus more on features. They throw in bug fixes for good measure, but you can't sell new versions of software based on bug fixes that most people didn't even care about.
Slashdot Mirror
Learning isn't, but school is. Especially grad school and upper division undergrad. Cheaters in a class artifically inflate the curve. This is one of the reasons that I don't like school. The very fact that plagiarism is possible annoys me. I would rather be creating something original that couldn't be plagarised even if I wanted to.
You can argue that grades don't matter much in the real world, but I have at least one counter example. Two people I know both graduated with engineering degrees at the same time. They both had 2 internships in their field (one in common) and did the same extracurricular activities. The main difference was in their GPAs.
One couldn't find a job by graduation time so he went to grad school for 2 years at a research assistant's salary. The other chose his dream job from multiple offers and went to work a month after graduation, taking grad school classes at night with his company paying for tuition. When the first finally finished grad school, it took him another 6 months to find a job he loves, and he still makes 10 thousand a year less than the other even though he has a Master's degree and the second guy is still slowly working on his.
In a better economy, the disparity may not have been so evident, but the bottom line is one guy has more home equity, more savings, less debt, and a few more fun vacations under his belt all because of less than 1 point difference in GPA. It will take the other guy quite a while to catch up.
Now, I agree that if the guy with better grades had cheated to get them, the other guy would catch up a lot quicker when job performance is what mattered most. But it would have still hurt him in the short term. Cheaters may not be hurting anyone but themselves in high school, but they can affect you financially after college.
How do you set the time zone? Or is it just Mars' equivalent of UTC?
One month with a broken hard drive is nothing. I've been running without a hard drive at all for over 6 months on my laptop (okay, not continuously, but daily). Of course, I've been using Knoppix. I intended to use it only for a couple of weeks until I could replace my hard drive, but I found I didn't miss the hard drive for the type of stuff I use my laptop for. At this point I figure why spend the extra $120 when I've been doing just fine without.
On the other hand, judging from my coworkers, most of the best coders I know use Linux at home or at least try it once in a while because it has good cheap development tools and is highly "tinkerable". They got into computer programming because they enjoyed writing programs for their computer in high school and were pretty good at it.
That made me think that Perl would be perfect for a beginner's class. You can learn better how to program instead of learning a programming language, and leave the concepts of libraries, compilation, types, objects, etc. to more advanced classes.
The only thing about the LotR DVD extras that I didn't like is when I watched RotK on Wednesday my brain switched to a picture of that short lady double whenever you see only the back of a hobbit/dwarf with the front of a man/wizard and to a picture of that tall man double in the opposite situation. It ruined a lot of the illusion for me. Oh, well, at least I know there are no doubles in the book.
I believe it stands for Direct Rendering Manager. I'm guessing it is a character device because information is streamed to it rather than randomly accessed, but I don't know anything about what it actually does.
Maybe no logo, but it does have drm (drivers/char/drm). Just don't tell the RIAA what it really stands for.
I find it very interesting that some people complain that slashdot just rehashes old news from other websites while others complain that slashdot publishes news that hasn't been confirmed on other websites. Do you want a news site or a search engine?
Free programmers as an aggregate give something away for nothing. Programmers as individuals work a relatively small amount for thousands of man hours worth of source code in return that is written by other programmers. The software installed on my machine adds up to about 1 gigabyte of source code. By my calculations, that would take me over 4 years of non-stop typing at my fastest speed to create. I think that is worth spending some of my free time for. Advantage: Everyone, Advantage with a sense of pride: Programmers.
There is something to be said for long, wordy descriptions. My first thought when I saw the first movie was, "Wow, they sure got there fast." When I read the book I felt like I was journeying with them and getting to know them as they were getting to know each other. It really improved my appreciation for what they were going through. The fact that it is a journey book makes the long descriptions very appropriate. "Return of the King" moves much faster because for the most part, they are already "there" and in the climax of the story, and only slows down a bit at the end for the journey back home.
Good writers rarely use long descriptions without a good reason. Thinking about why something was included can make it a lot more enjoyable. In college I bought a collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories and poems. I had read many of his works before that, but had never sat down and read all of them in close succession. After a while I realized that the stories I liked the best had started out with the longest descriptions.
Then I got to one story that I knew was going to be great. He went into elaborate detail describing the setting. I read and reread each paragraph, pondering the significance of each detail, the suspense building inside of me almost until I couldn't take it any more. That's when the story abruptly ended, with an explanation that all he wanted to do was describe some nice scenery. Just when I had become accustomed to Poe's masterful plot twists in his short stories, he created an entire story that was one big twist.
The best part for me was that this particular short story would never be featured in a school literature course. The suspense would be completely lost on someone who had not read all of the other short stories first.
Tolkien would not be this popular if he wasn't a good author. He takes some getting used to, but it is well worth the investment.
Why do I use Linux, then? I'll give you just one example. My laptop hard drive crashed this week and I can't afford to replace it for a few months. With a knoppix CD and a USB pen drive I still have a very usable system in the interim (I guess that's saving me money, but only for a few months).
Very recently, higher-end computers have become available without Windows pre-installed. I look forward to my next computer purchase in a couple of years when using Linux will be able to save me money on software for the first time in 6 years of use.
There is a such thing as a "legal alien." You don't have to be a citizen to legally work in the United States.
Yeah, that is a good point. But the sharer's computer is only responding to a request to make the copy, not a command. There's a big difference. A copy machine (well most copy machines) can't help but make a copy if someone presses the copy button. A file sharer's computer has a choice of whether to fulfill or deny the request, and won't fulfill it unless given permission to by the computer's owner (implied by them running the program). It's the difference between you willingly agreeing when someone asks you to commit a crime and someone forcing you to commit a crime at gunpoint. There is a big difference in liability there. There's a reason why libraries can have copy machines, but there are very strict rules about libraries posting content online.
Take the computer out of the picture and it becomes a little clearer. You stand out on a street corner with your cassette collection and a dual tape deck with a sign that has a list of songs and says you'll copy them for free if they bring their own blank tape. Someone gives you a tape and you make the copy of the song they wanted and hand it back.
I laughed when I read your reply. Gentoo is a pain to set up, I know, but once it is set up it is stable and very easy to selectively upgrade. They pretty much only use phoenix, abiword, and evolution, so there's no point in downloading 3 full iso images every 6 months or so. Since I do all their admin work anyway, I may as well use a distro I'm comfortable with. They used to have Mandrake, one of the user-friendliest distros I know, and they couldn't do anything by themselves anyway, so the next time they upgraded their hardware I just kept it at my house for a while and got gentoo up and running. Gentoo may be impossible for a newbie to install, but it is just as easy for a newbie to use as any other distro.
I have my parents on gentoo linux, and all they know is that compiling is what the computer does when I have them type "emerge somepackage".
I haven't tried Lindows yet. I think it would be great for someone like my parents if they didn't have me in the same city. They only have gentoo because I do and the upgrades are easier than when I was downloading Mandrake ISOs just for them all the time. On the other hand, they mainly have Linux because of the cost, so a subscription plan might not work in their case.
I'm currently debugging some Ada code at work that was written by a primarily-C programmer. And believe me, this sticks out like a sore thumb in his code and makes it hard to read even though I am "fluent" in both Ada and C.
Perl doesn't teach bad programming habits. Perl just allows bad programming habits to a somewhat higher degree than other languages. There is a big difference. C allows more bad programming habits than Ada, but you don't see people shunning C, do you?
Perl was designed to read almost like english if you write it properly, which I (having english as my first language) think makes it very easy to read. Especially look at some of the powerful constructs in Perl 6. Stuff like regexps are even easy to read when accompanied by appropriate commenting.
Perl written by a good perl programmer is the most maintainable out of any language I have worked in professionally. On the other hand, perl written by a bad perl programmer is the least maintainable out of any language I have worked in professionally.
Same goes for english or any natural language. A five year old may speak English very poorly, but you don't see people blaming that on the language itself.
I like the way the linux kernel handles the features vs bug fixes problem: have a separate branch for each. How can you say that the market demands only new features when a bug fix branch isn't even available to purchase? I can believe that the bug fix branch is worth a lot less in a free market, but I find it hard to believe that it is worth nothing.
I don't think the argument is that the code is more maintainable (meaning easy to follow and change) because it's open source, although if you've ever had to maintain code that someone wrote thinking no one else would ever have to read it then you know what a difference "many eyes" makes. Of course, many people will routinely read your code if you develop at Microsoft (or another large closed source company), so their code should be just as maintainable. Remember, most open source developers and users have day jobs at closed source companies, so how can either group write substantially better code than the other?
The argument is that bugs get fixed faster in open source applications, not necessarily easier. By faster I mean the time between when the bug is discovered on an end user's machine and the time the bug is fixed on that user's machine.
For one, users have an incentive to report the bugs in the first place. They didn't pay anything, and want to give something back.
Second, knowledgable users include patches in their bug reports, or at least a pointer to the flawed function, making tracking down the bug much easier. Have you ever tried to fix a bug that you couldn't reproduce on your own system? Having a user that can reproduce it while running with full source capabilities in a debugger really helps.
Third, you can have a fix for an average bug installed on your system in a matter of a a few hours if you do it yourself, a few days if the developer fixes it and you get the cvs version, or a few weeks if you wait for the next official release, all without charge. Our company gets that kind of service with closed source software only on very expensive, somewhat specialized software that we use in our own development.
Most closed source software you have to wait months for a service pack or years for the next release, you usually have to pay for the privilege of having a bug fixed that shouldn't have been there in the first place, and pay for features you don't really want that introduce more bugs.
This whole process leads to more bug-free code than closed source actually installed on user's machines, which is where it counts. And don't even get me started on custom features.
Now, I have never looked at the code wondering if perhaps there is a buffer overflow vulnerability in it. That doesn't interest me, but I know there are plenty of people who it does interest because we get a lot of security vulnerability patches without an exploit in the wild.
First of all, upgrading is easier than submitting a bug report. Second of all, I don't want to feel like an idiot for reporting something that has already been fixed. And if you report a bug, you have to upgrade anyway or at least patch if you want it fixed. It doesn't cost anything, so why not take the easier route?
I'd say that as Open Source gets more popular with big companies, the less bogus that assumption is. It is in closed source that the assumption is bogus, because the cost of evaluating and qualifying a new version of closed source software is so much higher. Also, more open source upgrades are bug fixes only, where closed source upgrades tend to focus more on features. They throw in bug fixes for good measure, but you can't sell new versions of software based on bug fixes that most people didn't even care about.